Cruel cartoon not Very Nice

I have never had a more uncomfortable or unpleasant experience at the National Theatre than at the premiere of Richard Bean’s England People Very Nice. I hated this gross, cartoon history of English reaction to four centuries of refugees arriving in London’s East End — the Huguenots facing persecution in France and the suffering Irish, Russian Jews in the late 19th century and the influx of Bangladeshis less than 50 years ago .

Bean’s play, although factually based, is not liberal, humane or interesting in its continual, wisecracking jocularity. It lacks the smack of conflict and avoids intellectual argument. It appears intent upon defaming refugees to England in terms of the malevolent stereotypes and caricatures you find in The Sun.

Its invective is often funny, sometimes inventively so, but in the slick, cruel, abusive style that Bernard Manning perfected ages ago. I am all for withering satire. I approve of bad taste and comic mischief, but in the sensitive field of immigration, it seems irresponsible to fan the ever-ready flames of prejudice by characterising the broad mass refugees in Bean’s simplistic manner: the odd Muslims, for example, appear as muggers and drug-dealers, and rejoice that 9/11’s catastrophe has come to pass. The Jewish anarchists merely look ridiculous. Much of the audience were evidently entranced by the vulgar cut and thrust.

As if bent upon reincarnating himself as the stand-up comedian he used to be, Bean’s conceit is to set his play intermittently through the centuries in a Spitalfields bar: there Laurie the pub landlord and Ida the hyper cockney barmaid, played to the manner entirely born by Sophie Stanton, express themselves more or less consistently in the language of 2009. "F-frogs! My grandfather didn’t die in the English Civil War so’s half of France could come over here and live off the soup," says Ida.

"There is a great noise upon the land, the farting of a million Froglanders," Fred Ridgeway’s authentic Laurie responds. "There’ll be rivers of blood boy! War across Europe," retorts a West Indian, who finally returns home but here anachronistically raises the spectre of Enoch Powell.

The set is dominated by the façade of a Spitalfields building that first functions as a church, becomes a synagogue and ends up as a mosque.